A Roberts Creek man is grateful to Canada's health-care system after a poisonous snake bite in Costa Rica almost ended his life.
Michael Lovatt was going downhill fast on March 19 when a medical team at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) diagnosed his condition and rushed an air ambulance to Seattle to bring back the antidote.
"If they hadn't got the anti-venom to me, my kids would have been coming to a funeral to see their dad," Lovatt, 61, told reporters during a teleconference from his hospital room at VGH on March 22.
Lovatt's ordeal began on the evening of March 16 when he was walking down a gravel road from his tourist cottage near Quepos in Costa Rica and felt a stabbing pain in his right foot. Since a carpet of red ants had been visible under his flashlight, Lovatt assumed ants had crawled up on his sandal and bitten him.
Within an hour, he was experiencing flu-like symptoms and his right foot and ankle were so sore and swollen that he could no longer stand.
"I went downhill real quick right after," Lovatt said.
The next morning, he was driven to the local hospital.
"They asked me if I had been drinking and I said no. Then they checked to see if it was broken, and gave me painkillers and antibiotics. I paid at the wicket and away you go," he said.
On his scheduled flight home, Lovatt's condition continued to worsen.
"By the time I got to Vancouver, my leg was swollen halfway up to my knee."
His lips were bleeding also -an indication of snakebite, as Lovatt later learned.
Early on March 19, Lovatt was admitted to intensive care at VGH and staff called in the B.C. Drug and Poison Information Centre. Within about eight hours, the team had identified the pattern of three red marks on Lovatt's foot as the potentially fatal bite of a bothrops viper, a snake native to Central and South America.
Using the centre's database, the team pinpointed Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo as the nearest place where the antivenin was stored, conferred with zoo officials and doctors in Seattle, and called B.C. Ambulance Service to arrange the emergency flight.
About six hours after identifying the snake, the VGH team administered the antivenin, which was produced in Mexico.
Lovatt said there was a point, before his two adult children arrived from Nova Scotia, when he thought he was going to die.
"I was scared, I was real scared. But when they got that first anti-venom into me it turned around really fast. They put over 40 units of blood products into me to keep me going," he said. "They were a great team. They saved my life. I'm overwhelmed."
Dr. Kathy Craig, who treated Lovatt in intensive care, said the greatest danger was the possibility he would bleed to death.
"The most significant thing the snake venom causes is profound abnormalities with your ability to clot blood. That means that if you have a tiny cut it will never stop bleeding," Craig said. "Normally people with problems with their coagulation can be fixed by giving them other people's clotting factors through transfusions.We were not able to change this man's coagulation no matter what we gave him."
Lovatt said he was vacationing in Costa Rica because he wanted to experience a tropical rainforest.
"I live in a temperate one so I wanted to see a tropical rainforest," he said.
While he saw his share of howler monkeys and exotic plants, there was one thing he didn't see during his month-long stay: "I never saw a snake."
Despite his ordeal, he said he would love to go back.
"I have nothing against Costa Rica. It's a real nice country." But, he added, "I'd be a bit more wary now."
